Specialist: Lapicida

Fashioning fine flooring from stone has been Lapicida's stock- in-trade since the Eighties and now, with the help of computer- guided technology, the company is carving out a new niche, as David Nicholls discovers

Chris Terry

One of humankind's earliest forms of artistic expression was working with stone - from scratching marks into limestone walls to creating naive anthropomorphic figures from rock. And while the ambitions of artists have come a long way in the past 40,000 years, the tools of the trade have not evolved at the same rate. Stone Age man, Michelangelo and Barbara Hepworth all used some form of hammer and chisel to shape stone, and an abrasive surface to smooth and polish it. So, too, do the craftspeople who work at Lapicida, although for the past few years, they have also had the benefit of more modern technology and tooling, which has revolutionised not only the way they work, but also what they can produce.

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The Yorkshire-based stone specialist was founded by David Cherrington and his son Jason in 1987. They started out making slate floor tiles (Fired Earth was Lapicida's first stockist), gradually expanding into other tiles and custom flooring made using stones from round the world. In the late Nineties, Lapicida added carved stone bathtubs and basins to its range, although the manufacture of these was outsourced to makers in Italy. Five years ago, the company bought its own CNC machines - essentially computer-guided cutting and shaping tools - to manufacture its own. The real game changer came in 2013, however, when Lapicida invested £500,000 in a state-of-the-art five-axis CNC shaping machine, which allowed an unprecedented level of accuracy and detail. Lapicida is the only stone specialist in Europe to use one.

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It is a surreal experience to be at Lapicida's head-quarters in Knaresborough near Harrogate, watching a stonemason hand-polishing a life-size sports car made from solid Nero Marquina marble, while a fork-lift transports an enormous white marble skull across the workshop floor. Particularly when you learn the latter is in fact an ice bucket big enough to hold 24 bottles of Champagne. Both are one-off private commissions, as was Maro, the artist Christopher Le Brun's five-metre-high marble sculpture of a wing that Lapicida created in 2014 and which now stands in the grounds of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. All three were made on the new five-axis machine.

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When Lapicida's CEO, Xenia Carr-Griffiths, joined the company two years ago, she was excited about the commercial potential of stone. 'We have something unique in terms of craft, technology and heritage,' she says. There have been collaborations with the likes of Bethan Gray and Lara Bohinc; another, with Anouska Hempel, was launched at Decorex in September 2016. Lapicida is in the middle of developing its own-brand Signature range, the star of which - the 'Erosion' bowl - was also launched at the design show.

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The block of marble that I am about to watch being turned into an 'Erosion' bowl is sitting on a plinth inside a booth while a robotic arm dances around it. The arm hovers about the marble, retreats, rotates and changes angles, before zooming in for its next incision. Instructions have been fed into the computer that controls the machine; the design for the bowl itself was created on a different computer using three-dimensional graphic software. It takes two full days on the CNC machine to achieve the desired shape and detail. 'People think this technology means the work has lost its handmade aspect, but that's a misconception,' says Jason. Once the bowl is removed from the booth, a further two days of hand-finishing is required. 'If this were made completely by hand, it would take three weeks. Now it takes four days, so the technology has allowed us to do more.'

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The 'Erosion' bowl is a striking piece; its surface is crying out to be touched. Its lip is asymmetrical and while the interior has a smooth, polished finish, the shell is frenetically patterned with facets and grooves carved into the marble. It is hoped that the Lapicida accessories collection will launch within the next 18 months, with the 'Erosion' bowl the pinnacle in terms of pricing. Although saying nothing for the moment, Xenia suggests further accessory designs could be in the pipeline for kitchens and bathrooms. If the num- ber of pre-orders for the Anouska Hempel-designed collection, which starts at £300 for a small white marble plate, are anything to go by, there is certainly an appetite for modestly priced Lapicida products.

Chris Terry

Of course, Lapicida still makes and deals in very fine floors, as well as stone surfaces for kitchens and walls - and all of these benefit from the introduction of new technology. They also continue to account for the vast majority of the business. But as Xenia points out, sales of three-dimensional products in the first three months of 2016 were more than for all the previous year. It is as heartening as it is rare to visit a company like Lapicida that has reverence for not only the skill and heritage behind it, but also the developments that are allowing it to continue to thrive.